What if Tuesday ends in tie?

Could the election next Tuesday result in a situation where Mitt Romney would end up as president and Joe Biden vice president?

Or with a President Obama teamed with Vice President Paul Ryan?

Unlikely as it seems, the answer is yes. It could happen.

As most people know by now, the winning candidate on Tuesday must garner 270 of the 538 electoral votes. If the count should be tied at 269 to 269, the election would be decided by Congress, with the House selecting the president and the Senate the vice president.

Before 1960, an electoral tie vote would have been impossible because the electoral votes totaled 535, which is not divisible by two. But when the Constitution was amended in 1960, three electoral votes were given to the District of Columbia, which brought the total number of electoral votes to 538 and made a tie vote possible.

Talk about unintended consequences.

To find out what happens in such a case, we have to go back 200 years and more. In 1800, the electors gave Thomas Jefferson 73 votes, but they also gave Aaron Burr 73 votes. As the law then stood, the candidate with the most electoral votes would be declared president and the man with the second highest number would be vice president.

It seems likely that those electors in 1800 meant to nominate Jefferson president and Burr vice president. But as things stood on Jan. 1, 1801, Burr had the same claim to the White House as Jefferson. So the matter went to the House of Representatives, where politics boiled for the next several weeks. It finally was decided, probably when Alexander Hamilton, leader of the Federalists, gave the nod to Jefferson, his political rival, because he thought Burr an even worse choice. That flaw in the Constitution was later remedied by the 12th Amendment, ratified in June 1804.

The next big test of the Electoral College came in 1825, after none of the four candidates won a majority in the 1824 election. The leader was Andrew Jackson, who garnered 151,000 popular votes and 99 electoral votes, while John Quincy Adams got 113,000 popular votes and 84 electoral votes. Since neither had an electoral majority, the issue went to the House of Representatives, where each state had one vote.

The Jackson people argued that their man deserved the presidency because he led in both categories. But the House, which still had a sizable number of Whigs, chose Adams, setting off a political storm that lasted until 1828, when, in a re-run, Jackson swamped Adams and went to the White House for the next eight years.

So what might we expect next week if the Electoral College count comes in at 269 to 269? If the election produces a divided Congress, as is now the case, we might expect the Republican-controlled House to vote for Romney, giving him the White House. The 12th Amendment states that the House votes “… shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote,” and Republicans currently control 33 of the 50 delegations, Democrats 16, with Minnesota’s evenly divided.

But when the issue moved to the Senate, the majority Democrats could be expected to favor Joe Biden.

That would result in a really divided administration of Romney and Biden.

More likely, the thing would be hammered out by the politicians. Various scenarios come to mind, none very appealing. A deal might take place in the Electoral College, where some electors are not pledged to a candidate. They can vote for anyone they want.

Or, a deal could be struck in Congress with whoever is elected president. The candidate chosen by the House might have to make some concessions to get the Senate to elect his vice president. Judging by what happened in 1801 and 1825, the political maneuvering wouldn’t be pretty. It would be bare-knuckle ball all the way.

I haven’t tried to figure out just what combination of states would come up with a tie at 269 electoral votes apiece, but it could happen.